Talk:Barrayaran Imperial Service
Vice-Admiral Say what? Just because Ges was running the invasion fleet, doesn't mean there weren't more senior admirals in the military. The Barrayaran military is huge. Vice-admiral and rear-admiral ranks very much imply a full-Admiral rank, and there's several very senior unspecified admirals like Knollys and Kanzian. ImpSec seems to be run by a vice-admiral equivalent, but ImpSec is not the whole of the General Staff by any means. Vorhalas is likely a more junior vice-admiral to Ges or a rear admiral in Shards. Yrfeloran 05:48, 18 November 2008 (UTC) Subdivisions * Ops * Ground military * Space military * Cavalry - very limited but includes the ceremonial squadron at the Imperial Stables in Vorbarr Sultana * ImpSec ''(military ordered: in ACC Ekaterin thinks that DK will conquer the whole High Command -> Duv Galeni is part of military) * ''"ordinary" Counterintelligence (maybe defunct: Aral Vorkosigan, in Shards of Honor, states clearly that the Military Counterintelligence did not know anything about the plasma mirror) * Service security ''(a.k.a. Military police): seen in Vor Game, mentioned only (as a part of Haroche's career) in Memory Anonymous Contributor 07:43, 05 May 2011 (UTC) 21:33, May 31, 2013 (UTC)Douglas Payne Dang! Very nice work. I'm torn between simply adding a section with this content to the article and going further by creating subarticles for the various pieces you've named. I'm going to let it sit for a day or two while I let it settle in my head, but this is stuff that definitely ought to go into the article. I might argue for a few other subdivisions: Hessman was in charge of Procurement, there's Logistics, and there's Budget and Accounting (Ivan in CVA appears not too happy to have to go to a meeting with those folks). One slight quibble, though. I'm pretty sure we know that ImpSec isn't in fact a subdivision of the Imperial Service. There are some authorial statements to that effect, if I'm remembering right, but mostly I recall that in Memory Gregor offers the job to Miles with the statement that the head of ImpSec doesn't have to be serving military. They also have lots of civilian analysts who work there (not quite like Byerly, per se, but I suppose he qualifies as an example of such - I'm mostly thinking of the people that Mark is so impressed by in Mirror Dance). I'd probably claim that they have a setup not too different from the US, where the intelligence agencies are separate from the military (ok, some portions are under Department of Defense) and that the branches of the military have their own intelligence branches along-with and that people in those branches of their military do tours in ImpSec... (Though there are some strong differences from the US system in other areas - the US is much more split up into lots of different agencies each of which have different "authorities" - aka turf; the Barrayaran system seems to have put the whole bunch of it under a single roof. Secret service, FBI, NSA, and CIA all under one building.... We'd implode if we tried to do that in the US.) KarenHunt (talk) 22:08, May 31, 2013 (UTC) Service security briefly appeared in CVA when Ivan talks about inspection team's irruption. Arnor88 (talk) 18:17, June 20, 2013 (UTC) Arnor88, 20:16, June 20 2013 Yes, I think we do see service security from time to time. In my mind, they come across as roughly matching military police (rather than being ImpSec-related). I'd probably do well to look them over in more detail to sort them out before I try to put anything too exciting into an article here.... Some thoughts going by... In Warrior's Apprentice, Baz was worried that Miles could be Service Security. When Miles stated that Imperial Security was likely to take an interest in him rather than Service Security, Baz was much more frightened. Definitely some sorting is in order. KarenHunt (talk) 18:24, June 20, 2013 (UTC) I think that SerSec is '''exactly' the same of the military police in real world. All over the world the MP is connected with military security branch: in some countries, military intelligence and Military Police are run by the very same agency: therefore the Haroche's career, beginning into the Service Security and ending within the Imperial Security is fine. For the military nature of ImpSec, I would offer the Italian case: the custom law enforcement agency (Guardia di Finanza) is a military corps, headed by a Lieutenant General coming from the Army, but definitively outside the Italian Armed Forces. I think that the ImpSec's status is somewhat similar. Arnor88 (talk) 22:53, June 21, 2013 (UTC) Arnor88 (talk) 22:49, June 21, 2013 (UTC) I'll go along with that view. I'll probably get some edits in this weekend, including putting something on the page for the subdivisions of Imperial Service. Let me know what you think of what I come up with when I've done so? Thanks, KarenHunt (talk) 23:56, June 21, 2013 (UTC) Naming Positions and Rank Scheme This is really a two-part question. First, I've been wondering if we should start making lists of known characters with their ranks. For example: Aral would be filed under Admiral, Count Piotr under General, Koudelka under Commodore, and Simon under Captain. The only issue is whether or not promotions would be included: Should Miles and Ivan be classified solely as Captains, their final rank, or, since they were promoted, should they be placed as Ensign/Lieutenant/Captain, since that was their career path (With notations that they have since been promoted)? Second, a question about the Barrayaran Service. As a mixed service, the ranks are, to be frank, odd. I was wondering if there's any indication aside from the article currently displayed as to how advancement works. It seems, that as an originally ground-based force, Barrayarans would follow an army-style progression (In the U.S., the Army, Air Force and Marines all advance from Captain to Major, whereas the Navy advances from Captain to Rear Admiral), rather than a different sort. Westbrook (talk) 18:58, May 30, 2013 (UTC) I've made a bare start with putting all known jump-pilots into the article. I wouldn't be adverse to putting people in under the various ranks as well, perhaps subdivided by what nationality/mercenary fleet they're in. (I was looking for ways to inspire people (and myself) to look at the lesser characters and write articles about them, and the main way I've come up with is to put their names into such lists.) For the second, I've made some tries to find that kind of info in the listserv as part of my big survey. So far, nothing that's too much help. I'm afraid that all we have are vague 'it makes sense to the Barrayarans' statements. Sorry I can't help much more than that. I suspect that our author didn't understand ranks very well when she started writing the books. KarenHunt (talk) 21:16, May 30, 2013 (UTC) And for the other half of the first issue (and think of Aral Vorkosigan - we've got three ranks for him attested to in the books): Whatever seems to work is what will work best. For now, I'd go with their top rank and annotate it to indicate that they've been seen at lower ranks. Duplicating their names in the lower rank slots isn't out of the question, particularly if an indication of which book(s) had what ranks is given, but I'm not sure how much work gives what amount of good result. KarenHunt (talk) 21:18, May 30, 2013 (UTC) I've made a bit more of a start - I straightened out the Admiral article and I put names into Commodore. I suspect Lieutenant might have too many people to be easily handled, but who knows? For now, I did mention Aral Vorkosigan's time under Commodore, as a Tidbit; if it gets unwieldy to use Tidbits for this job, I may try shuffling things around. I'm not totally happy with using Reference/Reflist format - it would probably be better to have the material in the text of the article (though if there's an orientation to who the character is, then there won't be a point to making an article for some of the more minor characters). No matter, though. Once the material is present, rearranging it into a thing of beauty is easier. (If you want to try out other formats for people from some of the other ranks, we can compete to see who comes up with the best way of presenting the data. :) KarenHunt (talk) 11:08, June 1, 2013 (UTC)